Tag: Putin

One of the problems we in America have just now is what we don’t know. Fake news? Real news? Experience? Make-believe? Altruism? Pocket-lining?

With nearly half-a-dozen investigations afoot – in Congress, in the office of the Special Counsel, in the Washington Post and The New York Times – wires are being crossed and what’s released to a pubic that cares is increasingly confusing.

Our reactions are not singular. As each day passes with more and more “Breaking News,” anger grows, impatience, suspicion.

Regardless of whom one voted for, the results can now be seen to be, in our mind, disastrous. Hiring a hockey rink jammed with ballet dancers – in effect, calling upon friends, neighbors, and family members – none of whom have any skating experience – is more than ridiculous. It’s incredibly stupid. Matching these artistic bozos with tasks to perform for the good of the public is tantamount to handing a six month old a bottle of J&B. Balance is not improved, and knowledge is nowhere garnered. Occasionally a good prima ballerina can be turned into a wizard on ice, but this happens so rarely we’d hardly recognize her. It certainly isn’t happening in Washington today.

We don’t want to flog a dead horse, but we’re still haunted by Paul Krugman’s column two weeks ago.

After the Donald so very graciously endorsed Ryan, McCain, and Ayotte, he HAD to take that one extra step into the kind of confusion Krugman was investigating. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the Russians and us…?” “Wouldn’t peace with the Russians be beautiful?”

The appropriate answer to that would probably be, “Sure, if it’s something THEY wanted.”

As it is, we’re haunted by Trump Junior’s admission of how important Russia and Russian oligarchical money has been over the years to Trump enterprises.

The question: is Donald still doing business with them while running for office? And is this permissible?

More, is Donald’s business interfering with our electoral process?

Put another way: is Donald’s personal business welfare now driving US foreign policy?

More than three years ago, we asked what made Egyptian children and Libyan children more valuable than Syrian children.

In the beginning of the uprising in Assad’s country, we could have intervened. As we had done (limitedly) in Libya and Egypt.

Timepassed. More than 200,000 have died there. Millions of refugees are jamming Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey.

Nothing was done by the international community to help Assad’s people eat,sleep,clothe themselves – in effect, to stay alive.

Now we have to ask once more: what makes Libyan,Tunisian, Egyptian citizens more valuable than those in the Crimea?

There is one big difference between these city-states. Mr. Putin has managed to convince his population that he isn’t conducting a territorial war in which
Russian troops,well-disguised and always denied, are killing family members, cousins, grandparents, children, and parents of Russian citizens in his lunge for a final Czarist solution.

Since Mr.Putin is running a tightly controlled one-man media show, he has denied consistently being anywhere near the war zone. Not surprisingly, and not unusually, the trouble between the Crimea and Ukraine is being blamed on(1)Ukraine and (2) foreign terrorists. This is called maintaining deniability.

The United States has been, of late, a reactive society. There are a hundred reasons for this, of which these are a few.

Faulty intelligence.

Living only for the moment, without a thought – as the ads say – for planning our retirement.

Believing no country but this one is right all the time.

Being in love with our own self-image as the greatest power in the world…and yet unwilling to make this situation a reality. Which is to say, no boots on the ground no matter what. This may, in the main, be a result of doing away with the draft.

As a society, we want what we want when we want it, and if we don’t get it, we forget about whatever it was as insignificant anyway.

So we are imploring the Congress, the President, the movers and shakers of industry and the military to please, just one time, only this time perhaps, look ahead and prepare us for the future.

It is ISIS that forces us to make this plea. But it is not ISIS in the future, or even of today. It is what will follow ISIS that matters now.